Strong belief in Russia being one of the poorest countries is one of traits of Russian mentality
Plus, being middle class citizen here doesn't mean you are not living in typical "хрущобы"-commieblock с зассаным подъездом.

Yes, you lot need to snap out of it. I don't believe it's that poor. At least not for regular people with normal intelligence, education and willingness to work. (but my impression is, that it's bad for pensioners, and that's terrible!).

Russia is doing a lot better than many other places in Eastern and Southern Europe as well. Like Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Greece. Moldova and Latvia.

Russia has no national debt and is flowing with oil, gas and valuable minerals. People are educated. My country has no oil and gas. Look at Norway, the richest or second richest country in Europe. They have only a fraction of oil and gas compared with Russia. And they are rolling in money. Plus, unlike Western Europe, you are getting richer, not poorer.

And about these square grey apartment blocks - yes they are ugly, but all countries have them, Eastern Europe just has more. Because industralisation happened faster and later than some other places.

And the problem with them is not so much they layout but how they are treated and who lives in them.

If people pee in the stairs, and vandalise, if there is rubbish and litter around and it's run down - then it's grim and horrible.
Like the house in Lilya 4-ever , if you've seen that film - soooo depressing and horrible (but that was in the 1990s) and I think it was supposed to be a "noir" film. Also, it was filmed in Estonia, not Russia. They just pretended it was in Russia.

I was in Belarus 2 years ago and saw tons of houses like that. I am used to seeing them in Sweden, but they are always vandalised and full of grim looking people and immigrants. Depressing.

However, in Belarus, they had fixed up these houses, painted and renovated, planted bushes and flowers outside and generally made it nice with parks and playgrounds. The people who lived there looked nice and respectable. With this in mind; as long as the ceiling is high, and not a claustrophobic feel, I would think it's allright. I'm living right now in a building from the 1920s which is listed as having architectural value (surprising, it's ugly!) so everything is from the 1920s, they are not allowed to change anything. Driving me crazy and I'm moving soon.

Here is the (quite sad) summary of current state of affairs in Russia from the latest Global Wealth Report 2013 by Credit Suisse:

No sign of growth

At the time of transition there were hopes that Russia would convert to a high skilled, high income economy with strong social protection programs inherited from Soviet Union days. This is almost a parody of what happened in practice. Efforts were made at the outset to distribute state assets equitably: most of the housing stock was given away to residents and shares in Gazprom were allocated to Russian citizens. But other choice assets in resource-rich companies went to the chosen few, and subsequent developments in a nation notorious for weak institutions have reinforced the importance of political connections rather than entrepreneurial talent.

While recent performance has been bearish, the period since 2000 as a whole has seen robust growth fuelled by a
world hungry for the natural resources that Russia has in abundance. Using constant exchange rates, household wealth has risen over sevenfold, from USD 1,650 in 2000 to USD 11,900 today. Wealth per adult is above the post-crisis low, but still remains below the peak in 2007 when the US dollar bought less than 25 rubles: now it buys 33.

The quality of wealth data for Russia is mixed. Financial balance sheets are now available and indicate that gross
financial assets average a little over USD 4,000. There is less information on real assets, but our estimates suggest that they are twice as high. Personal debt grew by a factor of 20 during 2000-07, and although it seems low in absolute terms, at USD 2,550 per adult, it amounts to 19% of gross assets.

Russia has the highest level of wealth inequality in the world, apart from small Caribbean nations with resident
billionaires. Worldwide, there is one billionaire for every USD 170 billion in household wealth; Russia has one for every USD 11 billion. Worldwide, billionaires collectively account for 1%–2% of total household wealth; in Russia today 110 billionaires own 35% of all wealth.

I have actually worked for CSFB which you are quoting. One word: Bull$hit. You can't trust a word that any bank says, seriously. See my post about the Max Keiser show. The man might be mad and rude, but he's right.

I'm not saying there is no truth to what they write, but half the time the analysts are plain wrong about what they say; or they write something up in order for it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
They have one word on their minds: Profit. Anything else is secondary. Including truth and integrity. The bank analysts didn't see the 2008 crisis coming at all, just for starters.

You should judge your country based on your own standards and expectations. I read that there is a new credit rating agency starting, to fairly assess the BRIC countries, since they are routinely put down by the US based existing credit ratings agencies. The new one was Chinese-Russian, I think.

I'm aware of the inequality problem in Russia though, and it's tragic. How utterly ironic, after 70 years of socialism, that such a thing should happen. The system needed improving, not scrapping - that's my view.
So the fruits of 70 years of "building communism" are sold for peanuts to corrupt people who became oligarchs, while the people who did the actual work are struggling to survive on $1000 /month with market prices for heating and food. In hindsight it's so obvious that it was insanity, isn't it! Any other course of action would have been smarter. It was as if all of Russia just capitulated and didn't care what happened anymore - apart from the oligarchs. But for the last 10 years or so, there's been a great comeback and I for one am happy to see it, since I like Russia!

What's done is done, so I guess Plan B is to just try to become a competitive market economy.
Seems to me that Putin is trying his best but that you need to get rid of the oligarchs and corruption.
I think you should do it the Russian way. In a way that suits Russia's needs, not according to what international banksters say... And don't be defeatist.

Sorry I'm ranting a bit, it's just my personal view - please take with a pinch of salt! I'm sure everyone in Russia has considered all these things many times over, and my view is nothing new.